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Short abstract:

In this paper we review how AI – a popular and ambiguous term that encompasses different technologies - is being applied to the agri-food sector, why, and by whom.

Long abstract:

In this paper we review how AI – a popular and ambiguous term that encompasses different technologies - is being applied to the agri-food sector, why, and by whom. This study is the result of a qualitative analysis of the digitalization of the Spanish food sector as part of the project DEMO (The Digital Turn of Environmental Governance). We first mapped the technologies that start-ups, small-medium enterprises, and big companies are developing, as well functions and applications of these technologies. On a second phase, we traced the use and application of AI, a technology that is being particularly propelled by the Spanish government. Then we applied a case study approach to two AI-related initiatives.

The first case study is a public-funded project that aims at advancing the applications of AI in agri-food “to make AI the governing system for the agricultural value chain”. The partners are from farming companies to big tech developers to research institutes. The second case is the regulation over the mandatory use of a digital field notebook to report farming practices. The first project uses data and the other is aimed at producing it, yet both share a common rationality around the use of data to provide “solutions” for the agri-food sector.

We untangle the rationales and dynamics embedded in the landing of AI in the agri-food sector. Results show that the promises of AI for prediction and controlling are challenged by the various difficulties to gather accurate and reliable data on the ground.